This Great, Proud City

By

Julia Vitullo-Martin

Updated March 16, 2006 12:01 a.m. ET

In recent days New York City has been treated to the strange public spectacle of the deputy mayor for economic development, Daniel Doctoroff, trying to wrest away the property of a prominent developer, Larry Silverstein, and turn it over to a government agency. "Soviet-style confiscation," summarized Mr. Silverstein. But this is not just any property. This is Ground Zero, a site routinely called sacred even by those who would never otherwise use the word.